


aeternum vale

by bam_cassiopeia



Series: damnatio memoriae [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, F/M, Gen, Obligatory TLJ Trailer Fic: The Sequel, Psychological Drama, The Force, Travelogue, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 05:59:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bam_cassiopeia/pseuds/bam_cassiopeia
Summary: Building a lightsaber is no easy task for two fugitives in a post-Jedi galaxy.





	aeternum vale

 

 

# I

 

Heavy rains fall on Phôn when Ephemera Stryder reaches the moon after two long days of travel, smudging a landscape she remembers to be beautiful. She hasn’t come here in decades; the last time she did, the world was brighter, it was a Rebellion she was fighting for, and Phôn had been wild and green and sunny. Today, under the thick curtain of raindrops, it’s grey, color and light washed out. Mera doesn’t believe in omens, and she’s not here for sightseeing but still, it makes for a grim start to her mission.

At least the surveillance station here has a hangar, small but serviceable. Something to be thankful for, since her Resistance-issued jacket is cheap and anything but waterproof. Even the Rebellion had better, back in the day. Back then, she’d thought she knew what scraping by meant. Just one more thing she’d been wrong about.

She hopes her bad feeling about what happened here is wrong, too.

 _GUESTS LEFT_ , the warning addressed to General Leia Organa had said. No further details, leaving her free to imagine all kinds of disasters.

Mera Stryder’s mission is to find those details - if they can be found. It should have been someone else’s job, but some things you have to do yourself. Not that there’d been much protesting. An old woman taking things too personally, that’s what everyone thinks this is about. Sentimentalism, and nothing else.

She’d be offended if it wasn’t exactly what she wants the rest of the Resistance to think. She’s getting on in years, Mera, but age and loss haven’t dulled her sharpness, and of course she’s got ulterior motives. She knows a thing or two about narratives and how to spin them. If no one ever remembers that, if no one wonders why she was so insistent to report on the Phôn events herself, it’s just proof of how good she is at crafting stories.

She’s better at that than piloting, in any case.

Most of the hangar space is taken by an old but well-maintained looking freighter, and although enough room is left for her own small ship, it’s a tight fit and a frustratingly slow landing. Which must mean that the much bigger Falcon had been hidden outside. That could only have made it easier for the fugitives to take it and leave with no one to get in their way. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Mera has few illusions on Ben Solo, despite widespread belief to the contrary. She can read the signs just as well as anyone, and for all that she loves Rey… Even before Chardaan, she knew deserts don’t always teach mercy.

It’s not the report Mera wants to give. She wants to tell a nice, palatable story in which no one dies. Something about a girl kept on the sidelines for too long, and a boy who doesn’t remember and can’t know why he’s being sidelined. Something about reckless stupid youngsters, out to prove themselves.

It might even be a true story, a thought that fills her with hope, enough hope that there’s a spring in her steps as she joins the three Resistance crewmembers waiting for her.

 

The husband is called Zeun, the wives Artemia and Elaine. There’s Elaine’s brother Chron on the base too, they tell her, but he’s on work shift at the moment, and there’s two children too, Luka and Haroun. _They’re scared of strangers_ , Zeun says, smiling uneasily before offering Mera drink and food, commiserating over the weather. _A shame_ , he says, _that she won’t get to see Phôn’s beauty_ . Artemia sighs, repeats _a shame_ , and Elaine rolls her eyes. Mera smiles and thanks them, but she doesn’t have time for drink nor food.

The family seems nice if a bit hungry for company, but she has no wish to stay on Phôn any longer than necessary. She’s supposed to go back to the Resistance, and from there someone else will follow the escapees.

They’re very sorry, Zeun and Artemia and Elaine, but they have little to say, which is both reassuring and frustrating. For the duration of their stay, Artemia tells her, Ben Solo and Rey of Jakku had kept to themselves, nearly unseen and unheard. Most days, they’d leave the base early in the morning and come back late in the evening. Everyday, they’d eat on their own, refusing invitations to share meals.

“Elaine, Chron and I spend most of our days on the job,” Artemia says, “and Zeun teaches Luka and Haroun. Doesn’t leave us much time, and your guests refused to eat with us.” Artemia huffs, but it’s more amusement than anger. Indulgent, that one.

Elaine rolls her eyes. “The boy was rude,” she says. “Not a thank you to show for himself.” She snorts, a dry, unamused sound. “The girl was slightly better, but not all there, if you take my meaning.”

“They didn’t cause any problems,” Artemia hurries to add, and besides her Zeun nods, lekku swishing as if to drive the point. “Not until they left, I mean, and they seemed to want to be left alone, so that’s what we did. We’ve been there before, after all,” she explains with an indulgent smile. She giggles and shakes her head. “Young love!”

Zeun smiles just like his wife, Elaine snorts dryly again but nods, her own smile reluctant, and Mera giggles too - a strangled, strident little sound. Artemia really can’t have spent much time with the two, if that’s what she believes. Mera’s not blind. She’s seen the boy watch Rey like she’s hung all the moons of the galaxy and then some, but Rey - Rey’s a terrible liar, barely able to hide her own dislike, as much as she tries.

“What happened, then? When they left.”

“We don’t know,” Zeun says, slow and cautious. “Three days ago we heard their ship depart. Their quarters had been emptied and we found… You’ll have to see it to believe it.”

 

It’s Elaine who shows her, after Zeun and Artemia excuse themselves to go back to their usual activities. “We left everything as we found it,” she says, leading Mera to a small room at the end of a narrow, dimly lit corridor. Grey walls and cheap furniture and along one of the walls a series of screens, one of them destroyed, the monitor bent unto itself as if seized and squeezed and crushed by a gigantic hand. Scorch marks all around.

“Shit,” Mera says, and behind her, Elaine chuckles.

“I had the same reaction,” she says. “Never seen anything like it.”

Mera has. More than once, and most recently on Chardaan. She shivers at the thought, but this, _this_ is nothing like what happened back there. Not enough destruction for that. It’s not a fight either. A burst of anger, or a lapse in control. A demonstration of power, maybe. Rey, or Ben, it doesn’t matter; they’re both gone and it spells nothing good.

It doesn’t have to spell anything too bad either. Stupid youngsters, afraid more than reckless; one of the two made some sort of mistake. They panicked. They fled.

“And you didn’t see, hear anything?”

“No,” Elaine says. “The walls are thick, and our own quarters are on the other side of the building, with the surveillance room in between.”

“Why so far?”

Elaine shrugs. “They chose the nearest room.” Her lekku points behind her, towards the other doors in the corridor. “Didn’t think anything of it. Who doesn’t like some privacy? There can’t be much of that on… wherever main base is now.” _More than you’d think_. Mera remembers the Rebellion and sharing her bunk with two other people on different shifts and finding the leftover warmth of strangers on her sheets. “I’m sorry we can’t be of more help,” Elaine adds. “But i’m not sorry none of us were around when this happened.”

Mera nods. It’s fair enough. Two force users even Leia Organa can’t handle, and where does she send them? To a family with two children on a remote moon. “It’s probably better you weren’t,” she admits. “Anything else here? Or just…” She waves at the crushed monitor.

“No, but you’ll want to look at their room. Not much to see there either, but...”

 

Not much is an euphemism. The room is small and grey and nearly spotless, the space occupied only by a narrow closet and a slightly less narrow bed and a brownish stain. The closet is empty. Mera avoids the bed made with a familiar kind of military precision, and crouches in front of the stain. Dried blood, and in the middle, something still shiny. Her knees creak when she rises, Ben Solo’s tracker, crusty with gunk but intact in her hand. She knew it’d be here on Phôn, and she knew it’d be intact; there’d have been a warning otherwise. She hadn’t thought she’d find it.  

Who took the tracker out, she wonders: Rey, or Ben himself? He couldn’t have known, he was comatose when they fitted him with it, and he’d never been told. Only Rey would have in a position to tell him. Involuntarily. Or not.

Or maybe something triggered his memories, and he overpowered Rey, found out about the tracker and took it out before fleeing. He could be on his way to the First Order, with Rey his prisoner. But there’d be traces of a struggle, then, or nothing at all, not that one lone destroyed screen.

And one intact tracker.

And one bed. _Young love_ , she thinks. Artemia had sounded so certain. There’s other reasons to share a bed, but still, it sounds a little less ridiculous. If she crosses her eyes just so, she can just about imagine them, lying side to side, hands held tight, telling each other secrets in low voices. Ben sitting on the ground and Rey on the bed, concentrated on taking out the tracker. It seems right somehow.

Maybe there’s something to these accusations of sentimentalism.

It’s worthless wondering anyway. There’s no security feed. Only two people know what happened here, and they’ve had three full days to disappear by now.

She’s seen what she needed to see. It will work with her narrative - it’s Ben Solo who destroyed the screen, most likely, his power returning to him. They panicked, thought he’d be hurt if they stayed. Rey took the tracker because only she knew. They didn’t hurt anyone.

She turns away, drops the the tracker in one of her pockets. “I’m done here,” she informs Elaine.

On the way back to the hangar and her ship, she asks one last question. “What would you do, if something old and evil was coming for you, if you’d burned all your bridges?”

“Someone’s after those kids?”

Her, and the rest of the Resistance, and the First Order, and who knows what else. “Me,” Mera lies with an easy smile. “And they aren’t children.”

“Everyone’s a kid at my age.” Elaine must be at least a decade younger than Mera. “I’d find myself a good blaster,” she adds, slow and thoughtful. “Someone to watch my back. A place to hide.”

“Sounds sensible.” Mera doesn’t expect _sensible_ from Ben and Rey, but they’re not fully stupid, and he doesn’t have a lightsaber. Or does he? Rey never hinted at it, but maybe she wanted a weapon fully her own, maybe she wanted to be rid of Luke Skywalker’s ‘saber and the weight that came with it. “Thank you,” she adds. Over the years, she’s found politeness to be a good thing to grab unto when the universe tilts under her feet.

“Thank me by not sending us your problems,” Elaine snorts, but she smiles as she waves goodbye before turning. Mera watches her go, alone with the knowledge that she has to decide now - go back to the Resistance with her pretty story or pursue the prodigal son and daughter.

 

 

# II

 

Celeste Gadabout has a Coruscanti clipped accent, the kind you don’t hear anymore, brown eyes and a pinched mouth behind which her true thoughts hide. She’s beautiful in a stately way, straight-backed, and knows the steps of old, forgotten dances. Among Canto Bight’s glitziest crowds, she moves like a blade with a target, sending a charming smile here and a few well-chosen words there. Gossip is Gadabout is an alias, and the lady really is from one of the Elder Houses. Or maybe she was a politician once, one of these disgraced New Republic Centrists who do so love Canto Bight and its laxness.

Not that Celeste listens to the gossip, even less answers to it. It’s not in her character to do so. She’s a serious person, Celeste, and she’s here on serious business, not for dilly-dallying. Rehabilitating the Gadabout family business is never-ending work - proof being how very few remember that name, and how those who do never seem quite sure what it was that Gadabout Mercantile did. Celeste is happy to remind them, and if diatium power cells have been out of fashion for decades, still no one dares laugh at her plans to restart production. _What a marvelous idea_ , her interlocutors say, maybe because they do agree, maybe because their dulled instinct is enough to tell them to be afraid of the angry core buried under Celeste’s cold countenance. Or maybe she’s just that hypnotic.

As long as no one questions her story, as long as she gets her way, Celeste doesn’t care which it is.

 

A magnate of the lanthanide trade from the Anoat sector, an incredibly fat man with white, waxed mustaches, listens avidly as she explains that the Jedi used diatium cells preferentially for a reason: why, they made better weapons, _of course_. “Mark my words,” she says, smiling with the serenity of certainty. “Anyone who’s been working in kyber-based weapon development will welcome the Gadabout products.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” the fat man hurries to say. “And I would very interested myself, of course. It’s only… “

“Yes?”

“It’s only that those crystals are so very rare. You must know that a few, ah, organizations, shall we say, maintain a very strict monopoly. One crystal here and there, that can be found, if at great cost, but enough for commercialisation? And expenses aside, Anoat isn’t so far from the Unknown Regions that I’d put even one toe in that market. I do wish, ah, that things were different, Lady Gadabout.”

“But mayhaps my power cells will have a similar effect on your thandanite crystal, doesn't that seem likely?”

The magnate agrees it does, although he should know better. He leaves with Celeste’s fake contact, and she smiles faintly as he goes, sipping precious, rare Alderaani wine. He’s not the first to hint to the First Order’s continued interest in kyber crystals, and he won’t be the last.

 

“I must say, dearie, this little project of yours tickles my fancy,” says a woman in a dress that probably cost more than restarting the diatium cells industry would, vivid green hair piled up high on her head. Celeste had met her, once, more than a decade ago, the young niece of a woman she helped bring low, but the lady doesn’t recognize her. “Still – it did not escape me that you said nothing of your backers in this venture.”

“Nothing escapes you, Lady Sindian.” Celeste gives her a smile, the conspiratorial kind, with just a touch of respect, one equal to another. Sindian answers in kind, radiating genuine satisfaction. “It is not, you understand, that I am lacking in propositions…“

“No, certainly not,” Sindian mutters, shaking her head. _Unthinkable_ , says the gesture. Celeste acknowledges it just as graciously, with a nod that means _indeed_ and _how clever of you_ . Sindian answers with a conceited smile that screams _I know_ , and _you’re not so bad yourself_. She’s good at the game, the lady, but Celeste is just better.

“No, it is simply that a worthy project such as mine needs… a worthy backer, so to say. I am not so stupid as my detractors may have told you.” Sindian’s eyes grow wide at that, as if the very notion was ridiculous, and Celeste inclines her head with her own self-satisfied smile. “I am perfectly aware of both the advantages and the inconvenient of my products, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Most would tell you the biggest drawback of my cells is their cost, but it is not. Money is only a concern for small minds. No, the real drawback is that for Gadabout Mercantile’s products to reach their full potential, they must be used in association with crystals – and the knowledge to do just that has long been monopolized and made taboo by secretive mystics.” Celeste huffs, distaste pulling her mouth down. She doesn’t have to fake it.

“A shame.” Of course Sindian would concur. “But say no more – _search_ no more, my dear. I know just the party to help, and I can guarantee you, squeamishness in the face of costs, monetary or otherwise, will _not_ be an issue.”

Quite sadly, Lady Sindian disappears without a trace only two days after that conversation. _A shame_ , Celeste Gadabout is heard saying. _Such a lovely lady, and this, before she could connect me to that investor of hers_ . She shakes her head. _A shame_ , she repeats.

 

During a so-called select gathering, after a showing of the most boring opera she’s been subjected to, a gaunt alien of a humanoid species she doesn’t recognize explains to her, in the bored tones of an academic, that diatium power cells were never worth the hassle. Celeste knew that already, of course, and she has to fight herself to focus on her interlocutor rather than indulge in scanning the crowd for familiar silhouettes. She’s heard the spiel so many times already: diatium is simply not rentable.

“There are about two dozen equivalent power sources to choose from, all of them less expensive and just as efficient. It’s not imperial standardization that killed the industry my dear, it’s the loss of its main buyer and lobbyist. You’ll find production costs to be very high, I fear,” they say, for what must be the third time. Clearly they didn’t listen to the part of her speech on how those have been exaggerated in imperial propaganda. “And the market is not what you seem to hope for; diatium power cells were only ever special to the Jedi Order for mystical rather than practical reasons.”

“This is where you’re wrong,” says Celeste, who can be just as pedantic. “However many alternatives to _my_ power cells exist, and however cheaper they may be, none have the specific properties the Gadabout products had. And willhave again, as soon as I find worthy backers.”

“It’s not a matter of superior quality, my dear,” says the humanoid. Celeste could slap them for being so obtuse. “It’s a matter of market.”

“I said nothing of quality,” Celeste insists, putting on her coldest smile. “I spoke of specific properties. _Useful_ properties, the existence of which you could hardly be more wrong about. I have no doubt that certain parties will be interested in generalizing the combined use of my diatium cells and kyber crystals, if nothing else. Early Imperial research on the matter was extremely promising - you wouldn’t know that, of course, it was all very secretive, and most of that research has long been buried by New Republic upstarts.” She shrugs. “Not that it will matter, in the long run. Investors will come.”

Swayed despite himself, the pedantic humanoid nods gravely, admits that if someone can strong-arm the business back into being it’s her. Celeste answers with a smile and a few polite words, coldness receding behind her serene composure. She’s already looking to someone else.

 

In the end, the hint she needs doesn’t come from the Canto Bight posse, but the unexpected call of an old friend on a secure comm range.

“Calrissian,” she answers to his enthusiastic greeting, allowing herself something like a real smile. She wouldn’t admit it, but it’s been too long since she’s seen a friendly face. “You best have a good reason to call, you old scoundrel.”

“Isn’t the pleasure of a conversation with you enough reason?” His answering smile is amused, the hurt in his tone fake but still she feels a twinge of guilt.

“You know it isn’t.”

“So cold,” he mock-complains. “But I do have a reason. Don’t I always?”

Celeste raises an eyebrow, slowly. “If this is about Elrood, I know what you have to say: there’s two dozen auction rooms specialized in Clone Wars weaponry in Elrooden alone, and it’s about the only place that has records of sales in the last ten years. You think it’s likely most were fakes, but one never knows, and _I_ would know better then most.” On the screen, Calrissian’s grin turns guilty. Celeste rolls her eyes. “It’s on the list,” she adds. “I’ll get there. I’m just starting.”

“You were _just starting_ four months ago, and Elrood was already a good idea then, more than Canto Bight or Scarif or Coruscant. In three weeks it’ll be the best of ideas. There’s going to be a sale, a big one.”

Celeste frowns. “I didn’t hear anything on the matter.”

“You’re in the wrong circles for that,” Calrissian says. “Or too new to them at least,” he relents. “It’s pretty hush-hush; word is some of the stuff is old imperial prototypes, and the underworld doesn’t want either the Resistance or the First Order to get their claws on it.”

“I’m not interested in imperial weapons,” Celeste reminds him. “The Resistance will be. It’s them you should contact.”

“I would, if I hadn’t also been told of another lot that I think you’ll definitely find interesting -”

Calrissian can’t help drawing out his reveals, and she doesn’t have the patience for this kind of things. “ _Lightsabers_ ,” she guesses, because what else could it be?

“My thunder, stolen,” answers Calrissian, shaking his head dramatically. “Yes, lightsabers. Two if my informant isn’t mistaken. He usually isn’t.”

 _Finally_. “Music to my ears. There’s just one little problem.”

“Don’t tell me you can’t go,” Calrissian protests, “and _don’t_ ask me to go in your stead.”

“Nothing like that. I just need the news to become public. I’m not the one who needs a ‘saber, after all.”

It only takes a heartbeat for Calrissian to understand. “Make a trap out of it? Ballsy. You might draw more than your escape artists to Elrood.”

“True,” Celeste admits, “but if it works, the risk will have been worth it.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

She shrugs. “No one’s searching for _me_ ,” she reminds Lando.

“You’re the boss. I’ll see what I can do to get rumour going. I’ll contact you again in a week?”

Celeste nods. “That’d be wonderful.”

“It’s a deal then. Love the new hair, by the way. I didn’t know you liked red,” he says before shutting off the connection.

“I don’t,” Celeste tells the dark screen. She’ll be glad to wash the dye off.

Her knees creak when she rises, but she wills the pain away. She doesn’t have time for that, not with Elrood awaiting. She wonders what stories will be told to explain Celeste Gadabout’s sudden disappearance from Canto Bight, so close to Lady Sindian’s, and how soon she’ll be forgotten for newer, tastier gossip.

 

 

 

# III

 

Elrood is smack dab in the backend of the galaxy, and although the planet once enjoyed a decent reputation for its shipyards, that time is long past, marked only by derelict ruins. Nowadays, depending on who you ask, it’s become a famed, thriving center in the trade of Imperial antiquities, fed by old battlefields; or maybe it’s a black-market hub, the place to go for Late Republic and Imperial military hardware.

El’m Welkin, who calls herself a trader with the kind of roguish smile that says she’s joking, knows it to be both: one market feeds into the other, and the only difference between the two is that one is illegal in the New Republic – or at least, what _remains_ of the shrinking New Republic. Elrood isn't a member of the New Republic, never was, so El’m business here could even be legal, technically.

Not that it matters. She cares little for the law – what has it ever done for her? Nothing, that’s what. She’s thrown all the rules out of the window, El’m, and she’s got no qualms left. Whatever the cost, the mission is the mission, and if the mission asks for lightsabers, well, Elrood is currently the best place to find some.

Already she’s asked old pals, called in old debts, to no avail: between the Empire’s deliberate destruction of the weapons, the work of the sect of the Acolytes of the Beyond, the more recent First Order grab, and the simple fact that they need care few know how to give, lightsabers have grown incredibly rare.

Which makes the sale of two at once a rare event, one that’s sure to draw in the most eclectic crowd, and maybe, just maybe, El’m’s quarry. She’s not heard word of the fugitives’ whereabouts since they disappeared, one of them saberless. They’d want to remedy to that, she’d bet her life on it, and buying a saber remains simpler and easier than finding the rarer components.

It’s a long shot, but long shots are all she has, so it’s what she’ll take.

 

Elrooden has about two dozen auction rooms, ranging from small, dingy backrooms to the huge dome of Radell Auctions. From the outside, the building is eerily reminiscent of Coruscant’s old Senate, if much smaller. It's new enough that the resemblance cannot be a mistake, and in another life, El’m would have seen a subtle insult in that. In another life, she’d have been here to shut down this farce of a sale, but inaction is a price she’s willing to pay.

There’s only one entrance, a monumental door through which the crowd flows like a river. For security, she guesses, although if she’s scanned for weapons, it’s discrete, and she’s not made to let go of her weapon by any of the security guards, too numerous to count, all armoured and armed with heavy-looking modified rifles. She doesn’t expect needing it, hopes she won’t have to, but nonetheless the weight of the blaster hidden under her poncho is comforting against her hip.

Inside, the auction room is a huge, echoing tiered arena, packed full of people of all shapes and sizes already looking to the circular stage in the center. Above are projected huge holos of some of the lots. She sees a few models of disruptors, a full suit of Imperial mandalorian armour, a series of beat-up vibro-pikes of dubious origin. There's more she doesn't recognize, some noted as prototypes. Those, with the ancient-looking data tapes, should worry her. Who knows what horrors may hide behind Project Cluster Prism, or Project Blue Harvest, or any of the others?

But that's not why she's here. El’m Welkin, smuggler extraordinaire, cares little for the consequences this auction will have on the galaxy at large. She doesn’t even care to know if there’s a First Order party here, or some of the more extreme members of the Resistance or the New Republic. She’s here to search for her two fugitives, and that’s what she does.

“Did you see a human male in black and a girl, a brunette in grey with him? They stole my datapad, I’ll have a recompense if you saw them,” she asks every five steps, all too often ignored. When there is an answer, it’s a negative one. It’s nothing but what she expected – even if they’re here, there’s just too many people to sift through.

Her jaw clenches, her shoulders painfully tense, her tone becomes snappier. A nemoidian shoves her away when she asks them her question, voice rough in her parched throat, and it takes real effort not to shove back. By the time the doors close and the auction starts with a dramatic show of lights, something altogether too spectacular and colorful for this market of death, and the lots start being shown, she’s halfway down to the stage. The crowd is more packed here, and it’s slower going, and she can’t be heard over the cheers, and Ben and Rey could be four feet away and she wouldn’t even see them, but El’m isn’t going to quit.

By lot number ten, a custom, gold-plated ion disruptor that El’m finds both ugly and ridiculous when she pauses to glance at its hologram, she’s barely advanced twenty meters. By lot forty, data tapes with the full tech specs of the KX series of Imperial Enforcer Droids, she’s abandoned the thought of reaching the stage, and it’s only pure stubbornness that keeps her scanning the crowd, right hand clenched around her blaster’s handle, ready to draw and stun.

“Lot sixty-six,” El’m finally hears, her heart skipping a beat as the projections turn to two lightsaber hilts, rotating slowly. “Most rare items,” bellows the announcer, raising a transparent box containing the real hilts over his head. _Please_ , prays El’m, and on the other side of the arena, shrill cries erupt – fear, not excitation. _Please_. Heart now hammering, she cranes her neck in the direction of the screams, where the crowd is seizing, panicking, stampeding away from –

 _Please_ , she prays again, and _there_ , there it is, _thank the Force_ : blue lightning crackling awake, Rey’s lightsaber. The shapeless, cloaked dark figure holding it can’t be anyone but Rey herself, and it’s got to be Ben following behind, a taller, darker form. Cloaks or not, she knows the way they move, Rey’s feral grace and Ben’s heavier strides, the absolute assurance she’s only seen in Force users.

El’m tries to call for them but her voice is drowned in the cacophony – no matter; they’re coming down, towards the stage and the ‘sabers and towards _her_ , but already the crowd’s reaction is pushing her back one step for each two they take. Someone fires their blaster; a flick of the shining blue blade sends it back, more screams erupting in its wake. The mob surges. El’m elbows a tall rhodian to take one step back towards the stage. She has to be near when they reach it, catch them before they snatch the sabers. She can’t miss them, she _can’t_. She ducks under a trandoshan for a second step, pushes a human man away for yet another, and is almost hit by a stray shot. The trandoshan falls instead, dead on impact. The smell is unmistakable: ion disruptor. The guards have started firing now, from the stage and from the upper tiers of the arena; above the hysterical crowd, blasts and of red and blue and yellow make up another, deadlier lightshow.

She’s caught in a wave of frenzied people, packed so tight that for a few seconds she loses contact with the ground, loses sight of what’s happening. It’s a new round of screams and lights that tell her. Rey is redirecting the guards’ fire. She draws her own blaster – she doesn’t want to fire at civilians, but she can’t let Ben and Rey die here, and she cant die herself, not now, not when she’s no near.

It takes her an eternity to fight her way to the vicinity of the stage, where the guards’ stand is going badly. Only four left. El’m raises her blaster, aims, fire, one, two, behind their necks. Three and four have time to turn and see her, but before she can react they fly away, as if swatted by an invisible hand.

Ben, or Rey. They’re so very near now, almost at the stage and the abandoned box and the sabers, Rey still parrying the thinning barrage of shots with supernatural ease, her fallen hood leaving no doubt of her identity, the blue light of her saber too fast to follow. And Ben, Ben who makes her heart stop with dread, because he’s redirecting blaster shots too, the way Kylo Ren once could, even as he jumps on the stage, even as he bends down and takes one lightsaber hilt, then two, out of their box.  

And nothing happens. No shining blade come out from either of the hilts; she’s near enough to see the plasma fizzle and die in sparks instead, the surprise and then the pain on Ben Solo’s face as a blaster shot goes through his side. It turns to fury as she screams, _Ben_ , a raw, anguished sound that merges with Rey’s _Kylo_. He raises a hand, squeezes the empty air, and the ground shakes.

El’m stumbles, avoids a crack forming near her feet and shoves a panicked Ithorian away. _Ben_ , she screams again, and on the stage Rey turns, supporting the half-crumbled dark frame, eyes going huge at the sight of El’m.

“His name’s Kylo,” the girl snarls, bringing her blade to a defensive position; a cornered, feral beast. Against her, still holding the useless hilts, Ben raises his head, features hidden by his hood.

“Please,” El’m says, “I’m sorry,” but it’s too late, Rey’s scrambling away, hunched over Ben, and before El’m can say more, the girl _jumps_ , bringing him with her. Up and up they go until they reach the ceiling, a flash of blue, and El’m jumps back, just in time, as a still-sizzling chunk of it falls. The shockwave sends her to the ground, a sharp, stabbing pain in her knees, and when she looks back, there’s no traces of the two but for the destruction surrounding her.

A few seconds of utter despair and then she drags herself up.

They’re gone now, and it’s best she disappears too. Someone’s bound to have noticed her running to the disturbance rather than away. She doesn’t have supernatural powers but she can slip back into the crowd, squeeze her way through the great mass of it, wait for the doors to open, slip out and disappear.

 _After_ is a completely different question.  


 

 

# IV

 

It takes a week for Azure Gad to decide that, of all those she’s gotten to know recently, Corellian dives are her favourite. Pirates and smugglers they welcome, and even bounty hunters and hired killers, but the real scum, not so much. It’s because of the war, she knows. Credits are credits, and Corellia has officially been neutral since Hosnian Prime, but its people, they remember the Empire.

If they’re clever, First Order supporters keep their mouth shut on Corellia. If not, Azure has seen more than one dragged outside her chosen establishment of the evening, protests deafened by cheers. She always claps and laughs with the crowd when that happens, sometimes even helps dragging out a particularly difficult case. She finds no real joy in it, but she does have some standards left, and she’s Alderaanian, Azure, one of the survivors. She remembers the Empire too, remembers it better than Alderaan itself. In her bad days, she feels guilty about that.

Throwing wannabe imps out of cheap corellian bars doesn’t give her much joy, but it does give her a petty kind of satisfaction, dark and rich like the best Eriadu wine. It’s good for her popularity too. So’s the laughing. She’s quick to it, Azure - head thrown back and hands on her waist, feet square on the ground, all shiny white teeth and unkempt hair. It makes everyone like her and trust her, that laugh, despite the old Mandalorian armor she wears like a badge of honour, despite her being even quicker to fire than to laugh. She’s no killer, Azure, but you don’t mess with her either, and in her world, that makes her respectable.

She isn’t, of course, just as she isn’t trustworthy and certainly not honest, as much as everyone seems to want to believe she is. Azure Gad is a shadow, a living con, and no one ever realises how much they say around her, or how little she gives back, or how few of her drinks she really pays for, or how she never loses at saabbac, or how her smile always says _I know something you don’t_. She drinks cheap corellian brandy like she’s born to it, like she’s trying to drown the kind of memories you don’t ask about; it burns like old mistakes on the way down, but she shakes it off easily and at the end of the day, it’s power she gets drunk on as she collects rumours and sightings, waiting for something, anything, to send her back on track. It’s a gamble, but it’s the only one she’s got left. Searching for two missing person who don’t want to be found in a galaxy at war is no easy task, even if they travel in a very recognizable ship, even if they birth new legends every other day. All she’s tried until now failed - she’s explored every hint and followed every trail and it’s led her nowhere, again and again and again.

She keeps on losing them, and every time she finds them, they slip away like smoke in her fingers.

 _This time will be different_ , is what Azure tries to think, what she tells herself again and again, day after day. _You’ll find them. End of the mission_. Maybe she’ll start believing if she repeats it often enough, if she doesn’t think about how much time elapsed since it first became her mantra, if she doesn’t think that the clock is ticking down down down.

 

It’s Maz Kanata who’d warned her. Resistance intel had told Azure she’d find the smuggler holed up in Nar Shaddaa, running her pirate fleet from a hole-in-the-wall cantina. She’d been easy to find, and unsurprised, which meant she’d been expecting the visit. But she’d had no answers to give Azure, refusing to even say whether she’d met with Ben Solo and Rey of Jakku.

What she’d had was a warning.

“It’s useless, what you’re trying to do,” the smuggler had said. “Best you go back where there’s people actually waiting for you. Those deserters of yours, they don’t want to be followed, and they’ve got good reasons.”

“How would you know?”

Kanata had hesitated. Behind the thick glasses, her eyes had been huge and so very sad. “I’m _old_. Older than you can fathom. I remember how things were long before the Empire was even thought of. I remember the Jedi, I remember the Sith – and so many others. I remember the one thing Force users had in common. They started training young.”

She’d said that like it was a secret, a dark one, and Azure’s heart had started beating hard, nervousness and anticipation rolled into one, and the same formless fear she’d felt when she’d learned about Chardaan. “There was a reason.” She can guess. She just doesn’t want to say it.

“There was. There is. No gift comes without cost, and the Force’s currents run deep. It’s easy to drown in them without a teacher, easy to take others with you. Easier now.”

Azure had carefully stepped around the memory of a crying little boy and his nightmares. Kanata had been speaking of Chardaan. Chardaan, and Rey. “What do you mean, easier?”

“The Force and its users… it’s not a one-way relationship. We shape the Force as much as it shapes us, for good or bad. If we don’t – There were hundreds and thousands of us, before. I knew many. After the Empire… There were survivors, a few. Most didn’t last long. Youngsters, I can count the ones I’ve met in the last thirty years on two hands. Nine. I can count the ones who didn’t drown on one hand. Three Skywalkers, and the girl, and she’s too old. Too old, and too powerful, and it’s the wrong teacher she found.”

“You told her to take the lightsaber. You told her to use her power,” Azure had said from behind gritted teeth, more angry than afraid. “You spoke of destiny. What changed?”

“The future. It’s in flux, you know. It’s not fixed.”

“Then it can change again.”

“Some things can’t,” Kanata had warned, and after that she’d refused to say more, leaving Azure with her fears and Nar Shaddaa’s piss-poor beer.

 

 _Not fixed, in flux,_ is what she clings to. That, and the fact that she doesn’t believe Kanata’s evasive, mystical warnings, and the rumours she catches in her net. Too late, always too late to act, but proof her fugitives are still out there. As long as they live she might win her gamble after all.

She might be down to going from seedy cantina to cheap gambling dens to cheaper dives, and she might have seen her hopes dwindle to nothing, but Azure Gad doesn’t let go. The underworld is always abuzz with rumours, and one of them will send back on track. She just needs to wait. War is the favourite subject these days, and she hears of the Resistance’s continued efforts to contain the tsunami that is the First Order, of systems rebuilding their navies in haste, of multiplying battlefields and of world conquered deeper and deeper coreward. The war is going badly, but consensus is it’s also going slowly. Leadership issues on every side, says popular wisdom, and Azure can’t help but agree with the assessment. The First Order lost Ren and Phasma in quick succession; what remains of the New Republic is slowly disintegrating. According to two sisters back from a smuggling run to Mon Cal, even the Resistance is down a General, although _that_ no one believes. _It’s the Organa you talkin’ about, kiddos_ , says the bartender, shaking his head like he’s just heard the best joke of the evening. _Too tough to go down, that one_.

And then, there are the other rumours: the auction sale of rare pre-Imperial artefacts gone catastrophic on Elrood, old news but still a favourite subject of gossip. A too recognizable ship competing in underground races here on Corellia, only a week before Azure’s arrival here – it feels like bitter mockery, missing them again, but now she knows they have an outrageous amount of credits to their name.

Another bar, another drink, a few rounds of sabbaac and she’s won so many credits out of a bounty hunter he’s down to betting secrets, reveals in low tones that the First Order has placed a catch or kill order on Kylo Ren. _Very hush-hush_ , he whispers; _don’t tell anyone_ . Azure pats his hand, all reassuring-like and says, very loudly, that First Order scum isn’t welcome on Corellia, and that’s quite the interesting story, _mate_. Two hours, an argument on whether Kylo Ren is even alive, and a few punches later, the bounty hunter is gone and new rumours are born. It’s the long game she’s playing, Azure tells herself, and there’ll be more hunters now, but maybe more allies too, if Kylo Ren’s known as First Order deserter rather than enforcer.

The next bit of gossip cuts her qualms short: a titanic fight in the ruins of Coruscant, people with swords of light and magical powers decking it out with First Order troopers in the old Imperial Palace. A young human with fire in his eyes declares to all who will listen that the Jedi are returned and with them will come fire and order. Only laughter answers him, and for once Azure’s is a real one, if bitter. The barkeep declares it to be fantasies: there’s no more Jedi, and Coruscant is a Core planet if a devastated one. “The Order doesn’t venture that deep coreward,” he says, with the tone of one who’s heard them all. A twi’lek in mismatched armour argues that after the battle on Ord Mantell, no one should underestimate the Order’s strike range. Her lekku shakes, betraying nervousness, and Azure wishes she was wrong, but she isn’t.

“That’s the most sense I’ve heard all evening,” she says, loud and certain. The crowd mutters its approval, and across the room, Makes Sense raises her drink, smiling in a way Azure hasn’t seen in what suddenly seems like forever.

She raises her drink back, sending a smile of her own. Makes Sense blushes a lovely blue shade.

 

Makes Sense’s name is Mnemos, and everything about her screams competency and shyness. She laughs delightedly when Azure kisses her, because it’s been too long and because she’s lonely and because Mnemos doesn’t remind her of anyone she knows. She doesn’t taste like despair and bitterness, and it’s easy to follow her back to her small place. _I like you_ , Mnemos mutters in the darkness of her bedroom, strong hands peeling away layers of armour, red mouth leaving kiss after kiss. _I hope you do too_ , and oh, Azure does, she likes the wit and the smiles and the clever fingers, but she likes that word even more. Hope. It tastes better than corellian brandy or sweet alderaanian wine or Mnemos’ mouth.

It still burns in her chest in the morning, when she leaves without a sound, because there are still people she loves out in the galaxy, and she still hopes to find them.

 

 

# V

 

Astra Traipse carries with her the ruins of another life. Every breath she takes tastes of old bitterness, of recent failures, of discarded names not all hers. It weighs her steps and makes her knees groan. But now more than ever she’s patient and faithful, and when needs call for it, a bit of a gambler. Only when the stakes are highest, only when she knows it’ll pay off, when the voice inside her tells her the odds are in favour, even if it doesn’t seem that way. Then she gambles, and never loses.

It’s gambling that led her here, to swampy, misty Dagobah, where the gnarltrees grow tall and their roots thick. She’d been in her small ship, floating aimlessly, slowly going through her datapad’s files one more time in search of something, anything to help her search, to give her another trail to follow. That something she’d found in the list of planets Ben Solo visited during his years with Luke - a decades-old attempt to track their travels, never deleted, transferred from datapad to datapad. Dagobah had followed Naboo in the listing, and the voice inside had said _there there there_ , almost shrill in its warning. Astra hadn’t thought twice.

Dagobah’s trees loom above her as she treks across the bog, following what others would call instinct. It points her to a direction, but it cares little for physical obstacles, and she advances slowly - she never learned to be one with the voice inside, only to listen to it, as her brother taught her long ago. It takes all her concentration to both listen and pick her path. She dares not stop listening: the voice is fickle at times. It might not warn her when she reaches her destination.

It’s taken decades, but now – now she wishes to have what she never wanted before, her brother’s ability to be one with the Force.

“But you are,” says the ghost as it appears. “And the true secret? It’s never too late for it.” There’s a laugh in his voice, and she _knows_ him, although she hasn’t seen him in decades, hadn’t even known him that long. Still she recognizes Obi-Wan Kenobi immediately. He’s wearing the desert-stained robes she last saw him in and the serene smile of the dead. For an instant she’s reminded of how much she’d wished for him to have lived, how angry she still is that he chose death, leaving behind the heaviest of legacies.

“Wearing a bit thin here, Old Ben.” His eyes twinkle, the exact way she remembers.

“The younger one was here not long ago,” the ghost says, smile growing fond.

“I thought so. And he wasn't alone.”

“No, but you already knew that.”

Astra shrugs. She did. Of all the doubts that still assail her, Ben Solo and Rey of Jakku separating is not one. “I wanted to be sure.”

It seems to amuse Kenobi. His eyes are doing that twinkling thing again. “Don’t you always.”

“No,” she snaps. “You don’t get to do that. You’ve been dead for decades. You don’t even know me.”

“I wish I had,” the ghost says, all traces of amusement gone. “Before, and after.”

“That’s your own fault, old man.”

 

The ghost leads her deeper into the swamps, and it seems to take forever and no time at all to reach the vestiges of what must once have been a small, misshapen hut. It’s started rotting already, and there’s not much inside. Half-erased traces of life she roots through under the ghosts’ watching eyes. Here, a thick, half-buried layer of ash delimited by blackened, grease-stained stones. In a corner, the mushy remnants of what once was a thick bed of leaves and moss. There, a jumble of wood – collapsed makeshift shelves, maybe. Not far, two wooden pegs driven deep in one of five posts, and that’s all there is.

But it’s enough; closing her eyes, she can almost see it. The fire burning and the air thick with smoke and humidity, the strong smells of the swamps and cooking and bodies in a small enclosed space. There would be two cloaks hanging from the pegs, maybe a lightsaber on those shelves, and in the darker corner, two people asleep in the bed. In her mind, they’re holding hands. Sentimentalism, again.

“She called him Kylo, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” The fond look is back. She hates him a little bit, for that. He has no right to that fondness, to the months spent here with them. Three, four maybe. Time enough time to build up the ash layer, time enough to need shelves, but not enough to feel the need to build something long-lasting. They must have been here right after Phôn.

She has so many questions, but that smile. That fondness. He has no right to be. No reason, either. “Aren’t you angry? He’s your namesake.” His legacy, as much as that of his own family.

“The Force works in mysterious ways,” says the ghost, expression unchanging. “How could I be angry? He is who he is.” Not a hint of patronizing in his voice, but still it grates. Jedi serenity, she supposes - it always got on her nerves. Astra throws a handful of ash at the ghost, watches it pass through him.

“Deep,” she scoffs. “Is that what you told him?”

“No,” Kenobi says. “I told him nothing. They didn’t see me. It’s too early for that.”

“You just… watched? You old dog.”

“If this is an obscure way to ask me if his relationship with Rey is physical –“  

“You need a lesson in boundaries,” Astra says, disgusted. She’d been _joking,_ Force. And she doesn’t need a ghost to spell out the obvious to her anyway. She can guess just fine on her own. “It’s not because you’re blue and fuzzy that you can –”

“I did not _watch_ ,” the ghost protests, indignant. “I felt it in the Force. They both have _terrible_ shielding.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Astra says, “and I can do without knowing, but my point still stands.”

Kenobi’s ghost shrugs. “Shame is for the living.”

“That wasn’t written with fuzzy ghosts in mind.”

 

On the way back to her ship, with Kenobi acting as her guide, she asks her questions. They stayed nearly four months; they chose Dagobah because it’s strong with the Force, and because Ben thought no one would search for them here; she already knows what they’d been doing, doesn’t she?

She does. “Ben was teaching Rey how to swim.”

“From a certain point of view,” Kenobi agrees.

At that, Astra has to roll her eyes. “You’re lucky I can’t hit you.” And then, because she needs to know, because Maz Kanata’s warning is still at the back of her mind: “Did it – did she? Learn, I mean.”

For a short eternity, the ghost remains silent. “She learned enough to leave Dagobah safely,” he finally says. “Mostly,” he adds.

 _Mostly_ is enough for Astra, who knows few things in life are certain. “Leave for where?”

“Somewhere you’ve already visited,” he says, which is exactly what she feared. “Nar Shaddaa. Elrood. Coruscant. Corellia. Other places. But it’s the wrong question. It’s the end of the journey you must look to.”

Gibberish, or maybe not. “The crystal.” There’s no way to know – they might have found one already. But something tells her they haven’t, the same thing that told her that _yes, yes_ , they’d search for a saber first, the same thing that told her _yes, yes_ , go to Dagobah. “You know where they’ll go.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s ghost nods. “Ilum,” he says. “Ilum, and thousands of years of traditions, stretching further back than even the Jedi. An anchor.”

A gamble, Astra thinks, and the voice inside screams _go_.

 

Half a galaxy separates Ilum from Dagobah. Then again, Ilum is in the Unknown Regions, so in a way, it's far from everything. It's not on any starmap she's ever seen either, but thanks to Kenobi’s coordinates it’s easy enough to find. From space, the planet looks like it’s been chewed and spat out by some cosmic monster. She lands near the ruins of an old Jedi temple, and if the horizon shines a sickly orange, here the ice has started growing back, creeping on sculpted blocks of stones.

It’ll take decades, maybe centuries or even millennia, but Ilum will heal. Astra can feel it in her bones, the sharp pain of regrowth, sharper than the cold, sharper than the jagged shards of ice she sees growing day after day. It’s beautiful, like a song she can’t quite hear, and although she could do her waiting in the ship, she spends her first days on Ilum listening to that song, exploring her surroundings. In the ruins, not far from the caves’ entrance, where the song resonates stronger, she finds herself a corner protected from the biting winds by huge fallen slabs of stone and there she makes her camp.

She doesn’t count the days of her vigil. They stretch out, long and empty and lonely. She grows habits, a routine she repeats like a ritual. It gives her something to concentrate on. Her days start with strong hot tea, and then she tours her little kingdom of ruins until tiredness seeps into her bones. More tea, her meal for the day, frozen rations whose terrible taste she stops noticing, and then she meditates the way her brother taught her, facing the dark entrance of the caves.

Nothing in there calls to her.

Strangely, she finds joy in that. She’s chosen her path long ago, after all, and it’s not that she hasn’t regretted it, because oh, how she did. But here on Ilum, where everything is stripped to the bone, those regrets are scoured clean of her. She is who she is, and trying to be someone else could maybe have saved others, but it’d have meant damning herself.

Darkness signals the end of her time meditating. At first, she’d move her fingers and toes first, to get her blood pumping again after inactivity, but a few days in and instead of feeling cramped at the end of the day, she feels rejuvenated. At night, she sleeps deeply, trusting she’ll wake if Ben and Rey finally arrive.   

 

When they do, it’s not at night. It’s morning, a beautiful one. Outside, the air is clear, the landscape more blue than white, and she drinks her first tea of the day more slowly than usual, enjoying the brisk air and the view. The horizon is more red than orange today, the ice shades of molten gold. She can’t miss the ship, a small dot that grows and grows into the familiar shape of the Millennium Falcon. She doesn’t watch it land, busying herself with making more tea once she’s done drinking hers.

Her hands are steady, she notes. She thought she’d be shaking.

When she looks in the ship’s direction again, it’s landed, far enough that the two people who exited it look like nothing but dark smudges on the pale blue of Ilum. She waits with her tea, watching the dark smudges slowly advance, transforming into her two runaways.

“Hello,” she calls when they reach her, and waves. Rey gasps, and her boy, her beautiful boy –

“Mother,” he says, like he can’t quite believe it.

Tears press at the corner of her eyes, and Leia Organa runs to her son.

  
  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks to [@holocroning](http://holocroning.tumblr.com) for her work as beta
> 
> This one was written before TLJ, as the sequel to another pre-TLJ fic that tried to be… well, a TLJ divergence fic. It didn’t work out too badly in the end, I guess. A lot of the lore in here is from the new canon, but I pilfered Legends too, sprinkled some of my favourites themes on it and put everything in a blender.  
> The POV fuckery was initially to be based on Leia's personality traits, and that’s still there, but then my brain did a Thing and decided Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief made for a great progression template.
> 
> I [tumble](http://and-then-bam-cassiopeia.tumblr.com) in the void


End file.
